


stare at the sun with your eyes burnt dead

by Anonymous



Series: a moment, prompted [6]
Category: Hollow Knight (Video Games)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-09
Updated: 2020-12-09
Packaged: 2021-03-09 20:40:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 528
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27982446
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: She's supposed to be more. This little creature (kill it) should not have bested her. And yet.
Series: a moment, prompted [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2186166
Comments: 3
Kudos: 34
Collections: Anonymous, Unofficial FFA Anon Collection





	stare at the sun with your eyes burnt dead

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted to FFA for the prompt "100 words of fools".

The sound of her beast's head leaving its shoulders snaps her to a halt, mid-motion, skidding and stumbling in the dust. She trips, and her knees should hurt when they hit the ground, scarred and broken as they are, but no pain comes except from within, when her thorax aches and shudders and something burns hot behind her eyes.

Viscera, stained a bright and luminous orange, paints the arena grounds in spattered trails and solid droplets like honey. It's been that color since she moved here, called by voices on the wind and drums like a heartbeat, hungry for blood and battle as the young thing she was in the wastes. Her beast, too, and all the fools. A curse of this kingdom, they call it, the madness that strikes all fools and fighters alike. Some swear by it as the source of their strength, and she can't say she agrees, but she's found herself a little stronger when she listens to it -- a sun in miniature, an old rage singing in her heart, urging her on.

She can't remember what color she used to bleed.

The little creature before her ( _the empty one_ ) raises its arms to the crowd, expressionless, and is rewarded with a shower of coins. She eyes the bodies circling it, soon to be removed by industrious lesser fools to prepare future matches. There won't be any for a while. It's rare a challenger gets this far, and replacing dead fools is costly business. There will more, though. There always are. If there aren't, a few lesser beasts can fill in the ranks; skilled challengers are a rare thing, too, after all.

It turns its gaze upon her, towering over her for all that it's no taller than a child. The sight of it fills her with redoubled fury that surges with the heat and pain in her head, but her splintered, grieving shell refuses to move, and her claws are empty. 

The challenger's fine and gleaming blade has not left its grip, and it raises that keen edge now above her, as if to bring the battle to completion.

She has been reigning champion for a long time, though she cannot put a number to it -- to any time, anymore, since the first time she was ousted from the top and had to climb, claw and nail, from the depths of the chasms below up to the arena again. She tracked her time for a while after by how many times she found death's door and left it again, until she lost count of that, too. If there is one thing she prides herself on, it is that she has always been difficult to kill.

She is a warrior above the rest, for she is a survivor; while the others leap to their death on a stranger's blade, she knows how to do so, and live. She has been struck down too many times to count, and her scars carry stories only they remember. This little creature ( _kill it, kill it NOW_ ) should not frighten her.

In the mirror's edge of the new champion's nail, though, all she sees is a light-blinded fool.


End file.
